CSSJ in the News

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Immediately upon opening its doors in 2012, Brown University’s Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ) launched a rich yearlong series of programs that asked critical questions about the trans-Atlantic slave trade, its legacies and ramifications for the present.

Beginning next Wednesday, Dartmouth will host a two-day lecture series as part of a conference titled “Reflections on the Afterlives of 1969.” The series of talks, which will feature speeches from professors at Yale University, The Free University of Berlin and several other institutions, will address a range of topics including student activism, black political thought, anti-Vietnam war protests and the implications of 1960s social movements on the world today.

Although the destination has a reputation for being a bit melanin deficient, the historical presence of Black people in one of the first and pivotal slave states, is loaded with the contributions of the enslaved Africans that literally built the city of Providence and subsequently its textile industry. Remember a little something called the Cotton Gin? The blueprints are still there. Learning of its origination and creation of the textile industry that affected Black lives for decades, is a big draw and attraction for Black families to visit Providence.

It was the 1820s, and debt was piling up for Mother Agnes Brent, superior of the Georgetown Visitation Convent in Washington. The convent had broken ground on a new chapel, with stunningly poor timing - a few months after the country slumped into an economic collapse spurred by the Panic of 1819.